The War of the worlds by H. G. Wells

CHAPTER II
THE FALLING STAR
THEN came the night of the first falling star. It was seen rushing eastward over the south of England a line of flame high in the atmosphere. Hundreds must have seen it and taken it for an ordinary falling star.
I was at home at that hour and writing in my study and although my French windows were open and the blind was up for I loved in those days to look up at the night sky I saw nothing of it. Yet this strangest of all things that ever came to earth from outer space must have fallen while I was sitting there visible to me had I only looked up as it passed. Some of those who saw its flight say it travelled with a hissing sound. I myself heard nothing of that. Many people must have seen the fall of it and have thought that another meteorite had descended. No one seems to have troubled to look for the fallen mass that night.

But very early in the morning poor Ogilvy who had seen the shooting star and who was persuaded that a meteorite lay somewhere on the common between Horsell Ottershaw and Woking rose early with the idea of finding it. Find it he did soon after dawn and not far from the sandpits. An enormous hole had been made by the impact of the projectile and the sand and gravel had been flung violently in every direction form ing heaps visible a mile and a half away. The grass was on fire eastward and a thin blue smoke rose against the
dawn. The Thing itself lay almost entirely buried in sand.
The uncovered part had the appearance of a huge cylinder caked over by a thick ashcoloured crust. It had a diameter of about thirty yards. He approached the mass surprised at the size and more so at the shape since most meteorites are rounded more or less com pletely. It was however still so hot from its flight through the air as to forbid his near approach. There was a stirring noise within the cylinder which he thought due to the unequal cooling of its surface for at that time it had not occurred to him that it might be hollow.
He remained standing at the edge of the pit that the Thing had made for itself staring at its strange appear ance astonished chiefly at